The Red Elvises

On Friday night (3/30/2007) I met up with my friend Vijay to check out a band called The Red Elvises It turned out to be a unique experience. They were playing at a venue called the The Blank Club in down town San Jose.

I followed my google directions to 44 Almaden Blvd, which is not too far from 87 and Santa Clara, and continued along Almaden to find parking. It was deadly quiet in that area, being mostly an industrial section of the city with high rise office buildings and hotels. I parked in a garage near Almaden and San Carlos that almost seemed completely empty and walked north along Almaden, which practically felt like I was in a modern ghost town. As I neared the double digit block of Almaden, I was wondering if I was in the right place. How could a concert be held in such a silent area?

But lo and behold I saw a neon sign on a beat up building that said, "The Blank Club". There was a line along the sidewalk fild with characters of all sorts. I was in the right place. I stood behind a guy in a red hat that looks a lot like the one drawn on the caricature that fronts their website He was also wearing a dark shirt that had "Staff" printed on the back (who knows what that really means) and last, but not least unusual, a black kilt (yes, a kilt). I had a feeling that I was in for an interesting evening.

After waiting in line for a while, I paid my 10 bucks at the door and stepped in. My first thought as I entered was, "why did they have us standing in line for so long?" There was barely anyone in the place, maybe 15 people. It was very dark inside, enough that you needed to let your eyes adjust before walking around. I'd say it's about half the size of Bottom of the Hill in San Francisco with a good sized stage in front and a bar in back, proudly advertising Pabst Blue Ribbon beer. It has a little more of the feel of a dance club given how dark it is and the fact that they eventually put on these twirling red disco lights that orbited the floor when the band came on.

A thinly dispersed crowd suddenly became quite thick when the band came on the stage, roughly an hour after I had entered the place and sipped through a vodka cranberry. They were a colorful collection of characters, led by their two originators Igor Yuzev and Oleg Bernov. Both appeared to be 40 somethings attempting to retain their youth by wearing outlandish pajama-looking outfits, completely ready to rock out. They started a set to warm up with that Oleg, in a thick russian accent, described as being "lounge style" music. "So sit back and sip your martini", he said. And so they traveled through a sultry song to loosen the crowd up.

The rest of the band consisted of a drummer, Adam Gust, from "sunny Minnesota", keyboardist Elena Shemankova from Moscow and two people whom I can't remember the names of but do remember where they're from: A female guitar player and vocalist from Texas and a tuba player from St. Petersberg, Russia. They were quite an eclectic mix of players as were some of the numbers they contributed to, some of which used the combination of an accordian, tuba and banjo.

The two women were memorabley adorned in form fitting leopard skin dresses that added some eye candy to the performance. Vijay described the way that Elena played as practically "making love to the keyboard", which is about as well as you could describe it. For some numbers she was tilting the keyboard off the ground and playing from the side in a very erotic way. I was amazed at how well she played despite the karma sutra style. The other woman was not nearly as provocative, but equally musically talented and easy on the eyes, pounding out guitar solos when called upon and switching to a banjo when needed. Vijay said they were additions to the band from the last time he saw them. We weren't complaining.


The band rocked out to numbers that were recognized by the cult following that surrounded Vijay and myself. Many times Igor would dip the microphone into the crowd, encouraging people to sing along, some times orchestrating vocal contributions from different areas of the club The songs were sung mostly by Oleg or himself with thick Russian accents and mostly comical lyrics, not taking themselves seriously, as one might expect. Before one song, Igor said, "Feel free to form a conga line for this one" and sure enough, a 30-person conga line was marching around the Blank Club. At the end of the first set, he said, "We're going to take a short break. Go get some alcohol and we'll sound much better".

The second set seemed to be pure encore with each song preceded by Igor belting out, "Do you want to hear one more?"..."Yeeeeeeahh!!!"..."Come on, you can do better than that. Do you want to hear one more?"..."Yeeeeeeeeeah!!!!!" And so they continued with several crowd favorites, each song seeming to be unique from the rest. At some point during their sets, Igor announced they would be continuing their "2000 City tour" by going to Petaluma and Sacramento, so we should "ask our grandparents to come watch". The guy was hilarious.

I really enjoyed the show they put on as much as they seemed to enjoy putting it on. Each of the players is exceptionally talented and they seem to allow for a lot of individual performances during the sets (Adam Gust put on quite a drum solo at one point). Oleg plays a guitar that looks enormous enough to be a prop, consisting of a huge bright red triangle and long shaft. The only down side I found about the show, is that it's very loud, which makes me sound like an old man. I found that my ears were ringing slightly as I left the Blank Club, not enough for me to not want to see them again, but not what I'm used to. I'd also like to learn their songs a little more so that I can join crowd next time.

Tips and Tid bits:

I'm now finding as I've gone to a few indie style shows that it's not necessary to show up on time. In fact, showing up on time or a little after can be very, very early, as bands tend to play at least an hour or two after the doors open...Pet peeve: This dude that seemed to be about 8 feet tall (probably closer to 6'3") with a ginormous (new word used by a friend of mine - giant+enormous) head that had its own gravitational pull stepped in front of me during the performance and was swaying from side to side (which caused me to sway from side to side). Folks, if you're that big, think about standing off to the side or towards the back. Of course, I'm tall enough that I may have been doing the same thing to some other poor soul, but I had established position for a good half hour before they came on...PBR Boy, one thing I'm noticing is that Pabst Blue Ribbon is showing up everywhere in bars across the bay area. I thought that beer had died, but its made a huge resurgance. Not sure if that's a good thing.